


time washes away the memories and brings them crashing back again

by agentx13 (rebelle_elle)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 04:02:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18087059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelle_elle/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: People have sent fanmail to Captain America ever since the forties, and the post office has dutifully collected and stored each piece. No one ever expected him to return and start going through it.One series of postcards and letters isn't like the rest. Someone who found a letter he and his mother threw off the pier in a bottle found it and responded and began a family tradition.As his world is turned upside down again and again, Steve comes to look forward to finding these postcards and letters, and he wonders who the family is.And then, one day, the letters stop.





	time washes away the memories and brings them crashing back again

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what happened, but way back in November when we had five straight days of cold and rain and darkness, something in me broke. Up to then, I'd been writing and editing every day for ages, but after that, I couldn't bring myself to do more than stare at a monitor or type a sentence only to delete it again.
> 
> This is the first thing I've written in months, and it's mostly meant to try and get back on the horse, so to speak. I even used training wheels and found inspiration for this story online. Here's the [inspiration](http://tippykazoo.tumblr.com/post/182186283864/positive-memes-i-threw-it-back-into-the-ocean), and here's the story:

The seagulls screeched, and Steve glared at them. He hated seagulls. Rats with wings. They’d eat anything, even right out of a person’s hand. One had stolen a fry from between Steve’s fingers once, and he’d never forgotten them.

“It’s not so bad,” Sarah said, turning her face to the wind.

Steve looked sideways at his mother. It was just like her to put a positive spin on the trip to the waterfront, where the air was saturated with the stench of gutted fish and shouts from the fishermen and the locals had to pick their way through the crowds of tourists. They were both feeling better, enjoying their reprieve from illnesses, and they both had the afternoon off.

They’d both have to go to work tomorrow, working themselves to the bone to afford the tenement apartment in Brooklyn. His father had been there to help once, but Steve tried not to think about that.

“It’s great,” he assured her. It wasn’t a lie. He was grateful to spend time with his mother. 

She smiled at him, a tired smile in a long line of tired smiles. She turned away from the water. “Let’s share a drink,” she said with a flourish.

Though they would have to share, it would still be a treat. They’d have to work a little harder to have food later on.

But her smile was sad, and he wanted her to have a treat. He’d pick up more hours, collect more cans if he had to, to make it work. “Sure!”

In the end, and after discussion about the pros and cons of different flavors, they selected a root beer that Steve’s parents used to drink. They walked along the waterfront, back and forth, trying to make the day last as long as they could without actually saying so. They only took sips from the bottle, instinctively trying to make that last as well. 

But it had to end. Nothing good could last. And soon, Steve was carrying an empty bottle after Sarah insisted he have the last sip. 

“Seems a shame to waste it,” Sarah said.

“We could take it to the recycling center,” Steve suggested.

“We’d only get pennies. We should get more out of it.”

Steve shrugged. “Can’t haggle them higher. I’ve tried.”

“No, I mean we should make a memory.” He glanced at her, and she smiled. It was still sad, but it was brighter than it was earlier. “Memories are worth more than anything, Steve.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Let’s put a letter in it. With our address. See if anyone finds it and writes back.”

Steve shoved his hands into his pockets. They didn’t have any paper, and they’d already splurged on the drink.

“We can use some of the newspaper,” Sarah suggesting, anticipating him. He opened his mouth, only for her to say, “We can ask a vendor for a pen.”

He closed it and followed her while she took some of the newspaper the fishermen had discarded.

Together, they worked on a note, and together, they tossed it off the pier.

In time, he forgot that bottle. His mother joined his father, and the world turned upside down and never went rightside up again.

* * *

Waking up in a world so much like his own and yet so different, that afternoon didn’t seem to matter anymore. Nothing did. He went through the motions; it was easier to do when he played the role of Captain America. He didn’t always know who Captain America was, but he knew Captain America better than he knew Steve Rogers.

The world had missed him, but he hadn’t missed it. Waking up to new technology, new writers and artists and philosophies, wars that were new and old at once, was a nightmare. He did what he could to read up, but the feeling of feeling overwhelmed never went away. And when Nick Fury suggested he go through his fanmail, the thought of reading of it, of being admired as a hero when he just wanted peace and simplicity again. He could never manage more than a couple responses to the letters Fury brought, all of them written by children. Even though he wanted to enjoy it, each letter weighed on him. He’d done his duty. He’d given up the things that made his life worth living. And for what? The world was still at war. What had Captain America truly achieved?

He moved into an apartment and rejected SHIELD’s protective detail. He knew they thought he was suicidal. He knew they were afraid of the propaganda nightmare of what might happen if he killed himself. But he had no intention of suicide. It wasn’t that he didn’t think about it sometimes, but he understood how people needed Captain America. And if anyone noticed that he was more reckless in the field, they chalked it up to Captain America knowing what he was capable of.

But of course, SHIELD took risks, too, and while Steve didn’t like it, he wasn’t entirely surprised that Fury had a spy installed to watch him. He wished it weren’t the girl he’d asked out, but when was the last time he got what he wanted?

Life moved mercilessly on. The world still wasn’t rightside up, but there were times when he almost felt like it might be worth it to lose everything. Or not. But there were moments when he felt more like he was living than going through the motions.

“You should give her a call,” Natasha said, not for the first time and not for the last. They never said her name anymore, but they didn’t have to.

“I’ll think about it.” It was noncommittal. But they both knew it was a no. It wasn’t that Hydra had made Steve sensitive to betrayal, it was that she was a SHIELD agent who had rejected him, and if he were entirely honest, he was a little embarrassed. She’d been a SHIELD agent the whole time, and he’d never even realized.

A couple months at the compound helped. He’d been at it for months before he realized he didn’t feel so grim. Seeing the team improve, having people around that he could relax with, having missions that weren’t all about war, having a place of his own where people knew who he was, where he didn’t feel like hiding (and, honestly, he couldn’t if he tried), helped.

He even went to get a bag of fanmail out of the storage container where it was kept. The container was stuffed to the brim, and Pam, the woman at the facility showing him around, told him there were three others that were also full.

He set himself to the task of emptying out the containers, one letter at a time. Most of it was fanmail. Some of it was hate mail. It had been kept in good shape; the mail seemed to be as touched by time as he’d been.

One postcard made him stop.

“Dear Steve and Sarah. Found your bottle. Made it all the way to New Jersey! Threw it back in. Sincerely, Harry.”

He reread the postcard several times before he remembered the bottle he’d thrown off the pier with his mother. He’d forgotten that day. Even now, the memories were hazy. The shouts of the locals, the meandering confusion of the tourists, the stench of the fish. He thought the seagulls had screamed more than usual, but he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t had a root beer in ages. But he could still remember the feel of the bottle slipping from his fingers, and the way his mother’s smile had been drawn and thin.

He still remembered how sick she’d gotten days later, how everybody thought she would die.

He set the postcard aside and tried to focus on answering more mail.

Distractions happened, of course. Earthquakes, tsunamis. Snowstorms stranding people. Emergencies and social engagements.

It was days before he found the next postcard.

“Hi, Steve and Sarah! Found the letter in the bottle in South Carolina. Wow! You must have a good arm! Threw it back in for someone else to find! Thanks, Madge.”

He frowned at the postcard, then pulled out the other from days before. The handwriting was similar, but not alike.

Still frowning, he set them both aside.

Over the months, he went through a container, then another. There were more postcards. Florida, Georgia, New Jersey again, New York. Each from someone different, each saying they’d thrown it back again. The handwriting was similar for years before switching to a childish scrawl. The handwriting went back and forth between mature and self-assured and childish and finding its way. Soon, the childish writing became more mature, and the mature writing became shakier. The places became more varied. Canada, France, England, California, Australia.

It was only when he came across another postcard written in childish scrawl that he realized he hadn’t seen the first person’s handwriting in a while.

The realization made him get up, ostensibly to stretch his legs, but there was no way a walk could burn off his energy. He was convinced now that only two people – three, including this new child – had been sending him postcards for so long. But why? Did they know who he was? He broke two punching bags as he brainstormed. In the end, he had no ideas and two broken punching bags.

More emergencies, more training, more missions. And when he came home, he always returned to the letters. The task was no longer so overwhelming, punctuated as it was by well wishes in familiar handwriting from random places.

The childish scrawl took on a more feminine slant as the years passed, and as the lines began to loop and the curves became flourishes, the postcard notes became longer. 

“Dear Steve and Sarah. I had the pleasure of finding your bottle off the Santa Monica Pier in California! I hope the two of you are doing well! When did you throw this in the water? It can’t have been that long ago – the paper’s in great shape! Or did you just do an amazing job of closing it up? Either way, I enjoyed getting a letter from strangers all the way in New York City! As you can imagine, we don’t get many of those in California. Instead, we just have people like Mindy Reynolds, who pretend they’re not having a sleepover for all the girls in class even though they very obviously _are._ It’s okay, though! Can you imagine being friends with someone so mean? Anyway, I threw your bottle back in for someone else to find! Sincerely, Aurora”

There were other postcards like that, tracking the exhilarating highs and crushing lows of elementary and middle school. Bobby Henshaw asked her to the dance! A teacher accused her of cheating on a history test because she knew too much. Her aunt came to her defense! Some girls stole her shoes during PE, got them wet, and hid them in the school freezer.

He couldn’t believe how weirdly invested he was in the trivial trials and tribulations of a girl he’d never met. Even though he knew she was too young to fade away, he found himself checking the dates of the postcards through the nineties and beyond. She was still young enough to be alive. He just hoped nothing had happened to her. He still had so many letters to get through, and he never knew when he’d find a postcard.

But then, he started finding letters.

“Dear Steve and Sarah. I found your bottle in Portland, Oregon! I also started high school a couple weeks ago, and I think everyone saying it’s going to be the time of my life was lying. If this is the time of my life, then I’m dreading college. Which is bad, because how bad was everybody else’s college experience that they say anything nice about high school? I’m in a bunch of AP classes, which is good. I want to really impress people when I go to college. Still don’t have many friends. Not like Mindy. She’s smart and popular, and I don’t hate her, I swear. I just hate- okay. I hate everything about her. How early does she have to wake up to do her hair like that, anyway? But it’s okay. My aunt says that I have a “steady” character. That means that I might not always be flashy, or charming, or popular, but I’ll meet people who appreciate me for who I am. I’m sure she’s right, but I wish they’d hurry up. Everybody here always talks about how awful everyone else is, as if it’s going to make themselves seem better. But it doesn’t – it makes them insufferable. I can’t wait to go to college. It had better be better than this! Throwing the bottle back for someone else to find! Love, Ariel.”

He was called away again and again. He hadn’t wanted to call her, not at first, but he still needed help looking for Bucky. And with Natasha trying to find herself and Maria working with Stark Industries, and Nick being more or less dead, she was the only spy he really knew. So he called her. And he tried to ignore how much like Kate she was, and how she got along with Sam, and how she laughed in a guffaw sometimes, like she was unused to the act but always ready to embrace it. He thought sometimes she seemed awkward around him, but it was hard to tell because he was so awkward around her. She focused on the work at hand, whether it was finding Bucky or eating a carton of Chinese.

He still worked on the fan letters. He’d made headway, but the letters he was looking for were fewer and farther between. Before he realized how much progress he’d made, the letter writer was in college, sending Steve and Sarah a letter in French from when she found the bottle in Paris, or in German from when she found the letter in the Danube. His fingers itched to make a couple corrections, but he stopped himself. She talked about going to college and working toward grad school, how she finally felt like she was finally getting somewhere with her teachers. They sometimes treated her differently when they met some of her family members – which made him wonder who her family was – and she started using aliases. She wanted to be judged on her own merits. She was excited about where she was going. She would list all of her classes for Steve and Sarah, but they seemed to bore everyone but herself. Even her roommate had to beg her to stop talking about shifting political dynamics in the twentieth century! Which she understood, since her roommate’s engineering classes bored her. She ended the note by saying she’d throw the bottle back into the water.

And then she went to grad school, but it was also sort of like a trade school. She couldn’t tell them much about it, but she was excited about that, too. These roommates didn’t care so much about her boring them – if anything, they were just as interested as she was! Had the two of them ever been in situations where they could debate topics they cared about with other people they cared about? And sure, the school she attended could be challenging, and the drop-out rate was high, but she’d never felt so happy and exhilarated! She was, of course, throwing the bottle back in for someone else to find.

The hunt for Bucky took them to Omaha. Steve took some of the letters with him. He was getting closer and closer to caught up, though more mail arrived every day. But he was getting closer to the present day. He was getting closer to finding out what happened to the girl – woman, now – who once had borrowed the names of fictional princesses and now notable women throughout history like Joan of Arc (he was almost certain) and Grace (O’Malley, he suspected). She’d also praised Lozen and Wang Cong’er and Fa Mulan. 

Sharon met him and Sam at the hotel. He still didn’t feel like he knew her very well. He felt like he knew Kate, the person she’d pretended to be for almost two years when she’d lived across the hall from him. But Sharon was a mystery. She was more business-like than Kate. Mission-oriented, Sam said. Like Steve, Sam said. Shut up, Steve said.

But Sharon… She didn’t talk about her personal life. At all. She kept things focused on the job. She would joke with him and Sam, but she never revealed anything about herself. He almost thought she might when she saw the stack of fanmail on his bed and said, “You’re finally going through those, huh?”

“Yeah. Figured it was time.” He looked at her – they were having a conversation, after all – and for a moment, he thought she would say something, that she was opening her mouth to say something.

But she seemed to think better of it and closed her mouth. When she spoke again, it was to him and Sam. “He’s long gone by now, but I’ve got a list of witnesses we can talk to in the morning. See if he let something slip.”

Doubtful, Steve thought. Bucky never let anything slip. And he wasn’t the only one.

The next letter was short. On a single-page. Barely a paragraph.

“Dear Steve and Sarah. Found your bottle in Washington, DC! One of the better things I’ve found in the Potomac, let me tell you. I hope this letter finds you well. I’m afraid I got a new job and won’t be able to write again for a while. Naturally, I threw the bottle back into the water for someone else to find. Love, Nancy.”

He frowned and set it aside unanswered. He didn’t know why he felt like he missed her. He didn’t know her. He’d never met her.

Well, it wasn’t as if she said she’d never write again. There might be another letter. In the past… two years. And new letters were coming in every day, more and more of them angry and unkind. None matched her handwriting, though.

And then his life turned on its axis again. He was beginning to realize his life had never been right, definitely not since the Great War, when his father had died. The Avengers as he knew them were done, and not for the better. His team was captured. His friends in hiding. He told himself that at least he’d seen Sharon for who she was, he’d seen her loyalty, he’d seen how she was willing to lose everything to help him. How she was willing to lose everything to do what she thought was right.

At the end of the day, it could have been construed as a win. His team was safe, Bucky was getting the help he needed. Hell, he’d even kissed a girl – and she’d kissed him back – for the first time in his life. 

So why did he feel like he’d lost?

He set the thought aside as he had set such thoughts aside so many times before. He wasn’t doing Bucky any favors in Wakanda, so he forced himself to leave. He knew by now that there was always a fight to be fought somewhere. Sure enough, he, Sam, and Natasha barely got any rest.

Months passed before Nick found them. Steve didn’t ask how, knowing that Nick wouldn’t tell him.

After the initial greetings, Nick handed him an envelope, then drew the others into conversation and drew them away.

Frowning, Steve opened the envelope and pulled out the letter. He recognized the handwriting immediately.

“Steve. I suppose by now you’ve gone through enough of your fan letters and might have figured out some things. I’m sorry. I turned a family tradition into a series of diary entries. In my defense, I never thought anyone would read them. I also never thought we would meet, let alone live across the hall from each other. When I started writing those postcards, everyone thought you were dead.”

His heart pounded in his ears. He hadn’t figured it out. Not until he’d seen the familiar handwriting. And now everything felt like a blur, like the entire world was being pulled out from under him.

“I never intended to lie to you. Aside from the job, I mean. Remember that psych eval you did for SHIELD when you got out of the ice? They were worried about you. And when you turned down a protective detail, we got underhanded about keeping you safe. I got underhanded. But I don’t regret being there, or lying to you so that you’d let me stay. I’m sure we can both think of times when SHIELD was right to have me there.”

He could. There was a tinge of shame to those memories. The loneliness and the constant, deep ache that haunted him after he came out of the ice. He would sit for hours staring at pictures of friends he’d lost until day passed into night. He supposed it made sense now, how she knew he was home when everything was silent and his lights were off, the bugs he hadn’t known about. He’d just thought she’d knocked on his door on the off chance he was home.

“If it meant keeping you safe, I’d lie all over again. I’d lie as much as I had to. Not because of your job or your title, but because of you. No, the lie this time was in the letters. In knowing so much more about you than you knew and never allowing you that same knowledge of me. Not knowingly, at least.”

She had never told him. It wasn’t the first time she’d lied to him. It wasn’t the first time she’d hidden part of herself away. She had been so honest and vulnerable in her letters, and in person… He knew he could trust her, depend on her. But she wasn’t the insecure, struggling young woman in the letters. Was she?

“I know we left on uncertain terms. I don’t expect anything more than what it was. I know you’ve had enough people lie to you – I know you probably think I’ve lied to you more than enough. And I know there’s a chance we may not see each other again. But I wanted to tell you that I was being honest with you all along (without realizing it), and I’m sorry about not telling you about the letters sooner. - Sharon.”

There was a short, hastily scrawled postscript. His eyes fell to it, hungry for more.

“PS - Throwing it back in the water for someone else to find.”

He held the letter in hands that suddenly felt too large and ungainly. He reread the letter several more times, even though it was already committed to his memory, just like her other letters. There was nothing more to gain from it, but he was hungry, starving, yearning for more.

He didn’t even have to ask Nick where she was; Nick already had her location waiting for him.

* * *

The seagulls cawed and clamored, and he liked them no more now than he did decades before. He narrowed his eyes at one of the gulls as he walked down the touristy street with its too-recent cobblestones and overpriced shops every five feet.

“Steve?”

He stopped. Her voice was soft, velvety. Turning, he saw her sitting at a table outside a cafe, a large-brimmed hat and sunglasses hiding her features. Her open jaw was the only thing that gave away her surprise.

Suddenly feeling awkward, he shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hey.” He looked around to see if anyone had noticed them. They _were_ fugitives, after all. But the street was mostly empty, no one around for yards. “Um. May I?” He nodded to the chair across from her, and she quickly nodded.

He sat. But now that he was here, he couldn’t think of anything to say. He’d never been very good at knowing what to say to girls. “I got your letter,” he said at last. “Letters.”

She nodded. “Figured. Fury’s would make a good mailman. Don’t tell him I said that.”

He watched her. Studied her. And she let him. The awkward silence settled around them like a gentle snow that grew heavier as the seconds past. A stifling blanket that could only be dispelled by talk that wouldn’t come.

He cleared his throat. The problem, he reasoned, was that he could think of so many things to say that he couldn’t narrow it down to just one thing.

“You came all the way here,” Sharon prompted gently. “If you’re angry, just tell me.”

Angry? She thought he was angry with her?

His jaw clenched. Of course she did. She’d lied to him again. But there was so much truth that he would never have seen otherwise that he wasn’t angry, couldn’t be angry.

“You keep making me fall for you when I don’t know who you are,” he complained.

She stared at him. Blinked. 

A seagull ventured closer in search of crumbs. Steve startled it with his foot. “Which is the real you? Kate? Agent 13? Nancy Wake? Sharon Carter?”

She looked tired, a ghost of a sleepless night. She leaned back in her seat. “I don’t know sometimes.” She paused. “Is that what you really want to know?”

“I want the truth.”

She held his eyes. The silence stretched. But now there was only challenge in the air. “I think I’m just me. Some girl with no name just doing the best she can.”

He nodded. Leaned back in his seat. Put his hands back in his pocket. “I’d like to get to know her, then. For real this time.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. They dropped to the table so quickly he would have missed the emotion if he hadn’t been looking for it. “I’ll see what I can do, I guess. You want a coffee?”

“What’ll it cost me?”

She tilted her head. “Get one and find out.”

He bit his lip to keep his grin from spreading. “What, are you going to write it in a letter for me?”

“I happen to know an excellent mailman,” she reminded him.

He caught the waiter’s eye through the glass and waved him over. After he’d ordered and they were alone again, he leaned forward and held out his hand. “Steve Rogers.”

Catching on, she shook it. “Sharon. Sharon Carter. Nice to meet you, Mr. Rogers. So. So long as we’re being honest, what would you like to know?”


End file.
